The warm afternoon session had a false start and was immediately interrupted with the red flag for Nikita Mazepins Haas, who came to a stop at the pit exit. This resulted in the Russian staying in the garage after eating out the FP2 as well.
Five minutes late, the lights turned green again for Qatar’s last practice session before qualifying on Saturday evening.
Third free practice started slowly, given the day’s conditions, which were less representative of qualifying and the race than the FP2 session on Friday night, but the Losail circuit was still busy on the first F1 weekend in Qatar.
After a quiet initial phase, Alpine’s Esteban Ocon drove a hot first lap of 1: 24.864 minutes, which he soon reduced to 1: 24.580 minutes on Pirellis Softs.
Mercedes-Bottas quickly finished the French with 1: 24.019 minutes in his soft-mist Mercedes.
Team-mate Hamilton needed a tenth of Bottas’ time to get to the top with 1: 23.950 minutes on the same site.
Alpine Fernando Alonso briefly took the top spot before being downgraded by Bottas and then Hamilton, who lowered the benchmark on soft materials to 1: 23.152 minutes.
Verstappen traditionally started his FP3 run late and came to the top of the leaderboard with 1: 23.121 minutes just before halftime, just 0.031 seconds faster than his title rival.
Verstappen seemed to have the lead in the Turn 12/13 combination with high downforce, which Mercedes was able to erase shortly afterwards.
Hamilton hit back on his next attempt, but Bottas went even faster to restore a Mercedes 1-2. The Finn set a time of 1: 22.573 minutes as all the leading drivers stayed on the softest Pirelli compound.
After a typical pause in the middle of the session, the action picked up again in the final 20 minutes, with Bottas and Hamilton both taking 0.2 seconds out of their best lap times to secure a Mercedes 1-2.
The world champion stayed ahead of Verstappen in a strong, if meaningless, performance for the Silver Arrows at the top.
Gasly separated the Red Bulls by finishing fourth ahead of Sergio Perez.
Sainz finished sixth for Ferrari ahead of Gasly, followed by the alpine duo Alonso and Ocon and his team-mate Charles Leclerc.
Yuki Tsunoda completed the top 10 for AlphaTauri, ahead of McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo in 11th place.
Sebastian Vettel finished 12th for Aston Martin, followed by Lando Norris ‘second McLaren and Williams’ George Russell.
Lance Stroll followed in 15th place in front of the Alfa Romeo couple Kimi Räikkönen and Antonio Giovinazzi and the Williams man Nicholas Latifi.
Mick Schumacher drove the 19th and slowest time in the Haas, team-mate Mazepin stayed in the garage after his early stable.
From FP3 onwards, the race management approached the track limits in a more relaxed manner and concentrated exclusively on corners 2, 7 and 16. AlphaTauris Pierre Gasly lost his fastest lap because he got far out of the last corner.
Other incidents on the route were limited to harmless turns for Gasly, Leclerc and Schumacher.
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